Monday, November 5, 2012

Chapter Four of My 2012 NaNoWriMo Attempt

Chapter Four

I hate moving. Really, really hate it.
It's right up there with my hatred of Hitler and Stalin, cancer and
world hunger, military actions and people who hog the passing lane on
the Interstate, which is why I do it as little as possible. Part of
the problem is I have too much stuff, books mostly, which translates
to dozens and dozens of boxes to be packed, sealed, lifted,
transported, lifted again, opened, unpacked, and arranged in some
semblance of order. That's the ideal; what usually happens is I
become overwhelmed, give up, and just dump them in huge piles all
around whatever living space I happen to be occupying. My poor
ex-girlfriend waged a running battle with books in the bathroom since
one of my favorite places to read is in the tub.

"Sometimes I think you care more
about these damned books than you do about me," she used to say.
Well, scream would be a more accurate description. "Can't you at
least get rid of the ones you've read? Why do you have to keep them
for so long?"

Because. I'd rather drown kittens than
lose a book.

She didn't understand. Margaret was not
a reader. Fashion magazines, sure. Glamour, People,
Us, things like that, check. All of them instantly
forgettable; all of them entirely disposable. But unless by chance
she was reading the current self-help tome du jour, and that
only happened maybe once every two years, she never touched a book
unless it was to move mine out of her way. "There's no room to
sleep on the bed! Or sit! Or walk, for God's sake! What the hell? The
sofa is not a bookshelf. Why is Norman Spinrad in the bathroom sink?"
She couldn't wrap her head around the idea that books are my friends,
my children. Sure, some of them are bastard children, misshapen and
malformed, but I love them none the less.

In all fairness, she was somewhat
justified in her resentment. I had-- I have-- books
everywhere. Stacked on shelves, stacked in front of shelves, on my
desk, on her desk, on the kitchen counter, in the kitchen
cabinets, scattered across the dining room table, the bathroom, the
bedroom; virtually every horizontal surface was (and is) a potential
(and actual) book depository. On the other hand, love me, love my
books. Margaret chose neither.

Here's a confession for you, to my
shame: under my bed there's a huge trunk filled with yellowing
paperbacks I haven't opened since the late 'Eighties, but in no way
am I willing to get rid of any of them. The fear is I might want to
consult one of them someday at, say, three in the morning, when the
bookstores and library are closed and in my mind that would be
inconvenient at the least, mindbogglingly annoying at the worst. I do
not suffer either well. Also, in this post-literate age I live in
constant fear of Fahrenheit 451 becoming a reality. This
should tell you the extent of my obsession.

Which is one of the reasons I broke
down and got myself a Kindle. Three thousand books at my fingertips
occupying less than the space of your average self-published poetry
chapbook, plus the ability to purchase books 24/7/365 and store as
many on my hard drive as memory will hold; it's online crack for
bibliophiles.

Yeah, my name is John, I'm powerless
over books, and my life and that of those around me have become
unmanageable.

Anyway, the point of all this is I hate
to move and it's mostly because of the books. Mostly. The other
annoying thing is every time I have to move I have to do it by myself
and that just plain sucks.

Okay, confession two: I have a low
threshold for boredom and moving things from one place to another is
boring. And tiring. And sweaty. And just plain no fun. Yeah, beneath
my aging exterior beats the heart of a restless thirteen year old
without access to television.

And on this day in particular, a
singularly irritated thirteen year old.

Where the hell was Ron? Ron knows how
much I hate to move and I'd been counting on him to help out, but he
was nowhere to be found, leaving me with a U-Haul full of weighty
boxes and rickety thrift store furniture.

"Hey! You must be the new guy."

I turned around to see a punk rock
slash wet dream by way of Goth culture. She was tall and lanky with a
Bettie Page haircut, black Doc Marten's, strategically torn skinny
jeans, a ripped black camisole with plunging neckline, ghostly pale
make-up with heavy eye shadow, and a biker jacket that looked as if
it had been torn off a dying Hell's Angel.

"Yeah, I guess I am. And you..."

"And you look like you could use a
little help."

"Man, that is the understatement
of the decade."I said. "My partner was supposed to be here
an hour ago, but I guess he had better things to do."

"Partner?" She gave me a
lascivious wink.

"Oh, it's not what you think.
We're strictly hetero, 'not that there's anything wrong with that,'"
I said in my best Seinfeld voice."He's kind of my business
partner when he's not pulling a disappearing act."

"What business?" She peered
around to see inside the U-Haul.

"Uh, well, I suppose I'm not at
liberty to discuss that at present," I said.

"A start-up or something? Computer
programming? Data mining? Amateur porn production? I've got a friend
who'll do amazing things on camera with a can of Betty Crocker
frosting and some whipped cream. And she'll work cheap."

"Uh..."

"You're not in the recreational
pharmaceutical industry, by chance?" Sarah shot me a huge grin.

"Good God, no! Why would you think
that?" My heart skipped a beat.

"Only that there are a limited
number of reasons why people choose to live in this neighborhood
willingly and that's one of them, but not to worry. It would be
definitely cool if you were."

"Hell, yeah! Oh, hell yeah!
Everybody in this neighborhood knows about 'em. They're kind of a
thing at parties. The woman who lived here before you used to make a
kind of kick-ass wine out of them and give it away to whoever asked."

"Really?"

"Really! Oh, I'm Sarah, by the
way. Sarah Sparks. I run a kind of anarchists' collective across the
street when I'm not pulling espressos for Instagram addicted hipsters
on Cary Street." Sarah pointed to a somewhat dilapidated house
with four gargantuan Harley-Davidsons in the front yard.

"A sweaty moving man, too, it
appears. But that's okay; I like 'em sweaty. You want some help with
all those boxes?"

I hesitated before saying anything.
Sarah didn't look like the weight lifting type, but she did
look like the punch you in the face type if I pointed that out."Well,
yeah, that would be great, but are you sure you have the, uh, time?"

Sarah put her fingers to her lips and
let out with a bloodcurdling, earsplitting whistle. A moment later
four huge, hulking guys in dirty jeans, faded leathers, and jailhouse
tattoos emerged from the house across the street and came running
over toward us.

"Boxes," she said, pointing
to the U-Haul. "Inside. Now."

Without a word, the guys immediately
started off-loading the boxes and furniture and hauling them into the
house, the faint smell of marijuana and malt liquor following in
their wake.

"Doesn't matter. They're all four
of them big and dumb and pretty much interchangeable."

"And handy," I said. "No
household should be without one."

Sarah laughed. "Damn straight! And
they're pretty low maintenance to boot, for the most part. Just fuel
'em, feed 'em, and fuck 'em as necessary. The rest takes care of
itself. And as an added bonus, they come with their own reefer and
beer."

I didn't quite know how to respond.
Miss Manners doesn't cover conversations like this one; then again,
Miss Manners had probably never encountered an anarchists'
collective. Hell, I've never encountered an anarchists'
collective, much less one run by Joan Jett's evil twin, but I wasn't
about to complain. The U-Haul was being emptied at blinding speed.

"Where do you want the boxes
labeled 'books?'" a voice boomed from the apartment.

"You got pizza? Or beer?"
another voice boomed.

"We've got beer, you
knucklehead. What we need is pizza," a third voice boomed.

"You morons gonna help with these
books?"

"Now you see why I call 'em 'The
Stooges.'" Sarah shot me another huge grin. "They can read
and converse in full sentences, too. And they play a pretty mean game
of D & D, when they're in the mood, except they all want to be
half-orc fighters with dragon scale armor."

"What do they do when they're not
in the mood?" I asked.

"You're better off not knowing and
we'd better go in and supervise before they find your liquor supply.
Otherwise, you'll get a live demonstration."

The Three Stooges (four, if you count
Shemp) were nothing if not energetic. They had my stuff moved
astoundingly fast, wrangling even the heaviest boxes with an ease and
grace that reminded me of ballet, if there were such a thing as two
hundred and eighty pound ballet dancers. Sarah and I didn't have to
lift a finger, except once to dial the nearest pizza delivery joint.

All six of us were sitting on the front
porch, finishing off the pizza crusts and drinking lukewarm beer
while the Stooges described their latest Ravenloft campaign in
excruciating detail, when Ron the Nerd finally made his appearance.

"Jesus God, John," Ron said,
as he exited a pick-up truck that had seen better days. "Who are
your friends?"

"Our new neighbors. Come and say
'hi,'" I said. As Ron mounted the porch, I couldn't resist
whispering, "And don't show any fear. They can smell it. It'll
make them go berserk."

Ron actually gulped as I went through
the Stooge introductions, grimacing as he shook each powerful hand in
turn.

"Down,
Curly. Up, Ron," Sarah said when she noticed Ron's attention was
focused on her cleavage.

"Oh,
uh, "Ron stammered. "I was just admiring your tattoo."

"That's
Neptune, King of the Seven Seas. And of my boobs. That's Curly, king
of shallow graves in desolate wooded areas."

An
awkward silence followed, but to his credit, Ron at least had the
decency to blush. "Gotcha. No offense intended."

"Nah,
I kid. Look at them all you want. I was just yanking your chain."
Sarah laughed. "I'm kind of proud of the twins. Grew 'em
myself."

"Okay,
now that we're all friends again, where the hell have you
been? You do remember we were supposed to move in today, right?"
I said.

"I
didn't forget, but man oh, man, something came up that you're never
going to believe! Uh, could we talk privately for a moment?"

"Okay,
guys," Sarah said to the Stooges. "That's our cue to leave.
These boys have business to discuss and I'm in the mood for a little
Risk.
Nothing like some world domination to round out an afternoon."